Saving up for summer

PETER BUFFA

It’s about time. It was at 2 this morning, anyway. Did you remember?

If you didn’t, go back to bed. I won’t tell.

Daylight saving time is one of those things everyone takes for

granted but nobody understands. We know we get an extra hour of

daylight, which we give back in October, but that’s about it. Most

people like it, a few people don’t.

Where did it come from? By the time we’re done, you might be sorry

you asked.

I’ve heard about as many explanations for daylight saving time as

I have for the price of gasoline and none of them make much sense.

For a long time, people had a vague idea that we tinker with time

twice a year to benefit farmers, which is ironic, because farmers

hate daylight saving time with a passion. Next time you’re on a farm,

take a close look at the cows. They don’t wear watches. That’s

because they could care less what time it is. When they need to be

milked, they need to be milked.

We may joke about losing an hour’s worth of sleep in the spring

and gaining it back in the fall, but farmers don’t see the humor in

it. Neither do cows. They both stumble out of bed at exactly the same

time every day regardless of where the big hand is or isn’t.

Some people have a distant memory that it had something to do with

World War I or World War II. That makes more sense than “Farmer John

and Elsie like it,” and is much closer to the truth, as we’ll see.

Who started this whole thing anyway?

The next time you’re trying to remember if it’s “spring forward,

fall back” or “fall forward, spring back,” blame Ben. Franklin, that

is.

Not only did Ben Franklin invent just about everything you’ve ever

heard of, he did it on a few hours sleep a night. He loved to stay up

until 3 or 4 in the morning, debating with friends, playing cards or

chess and consuming mass quantities of wine and beer. In his

writings, he often joked about the dawn coming so early. While

Franklin was an emissary to France in 1784, the Journal de Paris ran

a humorous essay he wrote advocating setting the clocks forward one

hour in the spring as the days grow long so he and all civilized

people could sleep a little longer. Surprisingly, Franklin’s

tongue-in-cheek suggestion got some attention not only in France, but

throughout Europe and back home.

A few places in Europe and the States fooled with the idea, but

time didn’t really start moving until 100 years later, when a Briton

named William Willett proposed moving the clocks up 20 minutes on

each Sunday in April and setting them back by the same amounts on

four Sundays in September. Willett lobbied hard for his idea and a

bill calling for daylight saving time was introduced in the House of

Commons in 1909. But it was beaten down after a fierce campaign waged

by -- anyone? Right you are, British farmers.

Seven years later, with World War I in full swing, Germany

announced that it was adopting daylight saving time to save

electricity and fuel oil, to which the British replied, “Oh, really,

watch this,” and adopted daylight saving time in May 1916.

We did the same on this side of the pond in March 1918, when

Congress passed the “Act to Preserve Daylight and Provide Standard

Time.”

Notice that last part -- “Standard Time.” Believe it or not, there

was no standard time, or time zones, in the United States until 1883.

Even then, standard time wasn’t the law, but a new system adopted by

the railroads. Before then, time was whatever the locals said it was.

Everyone in town set their watch by the clock tower or the church

bells or a clock in the jeweler’s window. It might be off by a few

minutes or a lot of minutes now and then, but when the clock or the

bell tower said it was half past noon, it was half past noon and that

was the end of it.

With everybody keeping their own time in 50 states and 50,000

towns, making the trains run on time was really hard.

Even then, nobody paid much attention to what Union Pacific and

friends wanted until Congress did the deed in the aforementioned

Standard Time Act of 1918.

Once again, the farmers hated it. They raised hell down on the

farm and elsewhere until Congress repealed daylight saving in 1919.

FDR, and that’s “Mr. President FDR” to you, reintroduced daylight

saving time as an emergency energy-saving measure early in World War

II. It was observed all year long, was called “war time” rather than

daylight saving time, and was lifted, again, when the war was over.

Twenty years later, Congress passed the “Uniform Time Act of

1966,” which standardized exactly when the big hand would be moved

back, or forward, then officially adopted “daylight saving time” in

1973 as a response to the energy “crisis,” which was about as much of

a crisis as the current “gas crisis,” but don’t get me started.

Individual states were allowed to opt out of daylight savings time,

which Arizona, Hawaii and Indiana did, and still do.

So, that is the story of daylight, saving, and time. Personally,

however it started, I think we do it because most people will take

all the daylight they can get, thank you, especially when things warm

up. If the cows have an issue with that, they’ll just have to deal

with it. Moo. I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at ptrb4@aol.com.